THE FALCON.I know a falcon swift and peerlessAs e'er was cradled in the pine;No bird had ever eye so fearless,Or wings so strong as this of mine.The winds not better love to pilotA cloud with molten gold o'errun,Than him, a little burning islet,A star above the coming sun.For with a lark's heart he doth tower,By a glorious, upward instinct drawn;No bee nestles deeper in the flowerThan he in the bursting rose of dawn.No harmless dove, no bird that singeth,Shudders to see him overhead;The rush of his fierce swooping bringethTo innocent hearts no thrill of dread.Let fraud and wrong and baseness shiver,For still between them and the skyThe falcon Truth hangs poised foreverAnd marks them with his vengeful eye.
TRIAL.I.Whether the idle prisoner through his grateWatches the waving of the grass-tuft small,Which, having colonized its rift i' the wall,Takes its free risk of good or evil fate,And, from the sky's just helmet draws its lotDaily of shower or sunshine, cold or hot;—Whether the closer captive of a creed,Cooped up from birth to grind out endless chaff,Sees through his treadmill-bars the noonday laugh,And feels in vain his crumpled pinions breed;—Whether the Georgian slave look up and mark,With bellying sails puffed full, the tall cloud-barkSink northward slowly,—thou alone seem'st good,Fair only thou, O Freedom, whose desireCan light in muddiest souls quick seeds of fire,And strain life's chords to the old heroic mood.II.Yet are there other gifts more fair than thine,Nor can I count him happiest who has neverBeen forced with his own hand his chains to sever,And for himself find out the way divine;He never knew the aspirer's glorious pains,He never earned the struggle's priceless gains.O, block by block, with sore and sharp endeavor,Lifelong we build these human natures upInto a temple fit for freedom's shrine,And Trial ever consecrates the cupWherefrom we pour her sacrificial wine.
A REQUIEM.Ay, pale and silent maiden,Cold as thou liest there,Thine was the sunniest natureThat ever drew the air,The wildest and most wayward,And yet so gently kind,Thou seemedst but to bodyA breath of summer wind.Into the eternal shadowThat girds our life around,Into the infinite silenceWherewith Death's shore is bound,Thou hast gone forth, belovèd!And I were mean to weep,That thou hast left Life's shallows,And dost possess the Deep.Thou liest low and silent,Thy heart is cold and still,Thine eyes are shut forever,And Death hath had his will;He loved and would have taken,I loved and would have kept,We strove,—and he was stronger,And I have never wept.Let him possess thy body,Thy soul is still with me,More sunny and more gladsomeThan it was wont to be:Thy body was a fetterThat bound me to the flesh,Thank God that it is broken,And now I live afresh!Now I can see thee clearly;The dusky cloud of clay,That hid thy starry spirit,Is rent and blown away:To earth I give thy body,Thy spirit to the sky,I saw its bright wings growing,And knew that thou must fly.Now I can love thee truly,For nothing comes betweenThe senses and the spirit,The seen and the unseen;Lifts the eternal shadow,The silence bursts apart,And the soul's boundless futureIs present in my heart.
A PARABLE.Worn and footsore was the Prophet,When he gained the holy hill;"God has left the earth," he murmured,"Here his presence lingers still."God of all the olden prophets,Wilt thou speak with men no more?Have I not as truly served thee,As thy chosen ones of yore?"Hear me, guider of my fathers,Lo! a humble heart is mine;By thy mercy I beseech thee,Grant thy servant but a sign!"Bowing then his head, he listenedFor an answer to his prayer;No loud burst of thunder followed,Not a murmur stirred the air:—But the tuft of moss before himOpened while he waited yet,And, from out the rock's hard bosom,Sprang a tender violet."God! I thank thee," said the Prophet"Hard of heart and blind was I,Looking to the holy mountainFor the gift of prophecy."Still thou speakest with thy childrenFreely as in eld sublime;Humbleness, and love, and patience,Still give empire over time."Had I trusted in my nature,And had faith in lowly things,Thou thyself wouldst then have sought me,And set free my spirit's wings."But I looked for signs and wonders,That o'er men should give me sway,Thirsting to be more than mortal,I was even less than clay."Ere I entered on my journey,As I girt my loins to start,Ran to me my little daughter,The beloved of my heart;—"In her hand she held a flower,Like to this as like may be,Which, beside my very threshold,She had plucked and brought to me."1842.
A GLANCE BEHIND THE CURTAIN.We see but half the causes of our deeds,Seeking them wholly in the outer life,And heedless of the encircling spirit-world,Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in usAll germs of pure and world-wide purposes.From one stage of our being to the nextWe pass unconscious o'er a slender bridge,The momentary work of unseen hands,Which crumbles down behind us; looking back,We see the other shore, the gulf between,And, marvelling how we won to where we stand,Content ourselves to call the builder Chance,We trace the wisdom to the apple's fall,Not to the birth-throes of a mighty TruthWhich, for long ages in blank Chaos dumb,Yet yearned to be incarnate, and had foundAt last a spirit meet to be the wombFrom which it might be born to bless mankind,—Not to the soul of Newton, ripe with allThe hoarded thoughtfulness of earnest years,And waiting but one ray of sunlight moreTo blossom fully.But whence came that ray?We call our sorrows Destiny, but oughtRather to name our high successes so.Only the instincts of great souls are Fate,And have predestined sway: all other things,Except by leave of us, could never be.For Destiny is but the breath of GodStill moving in us, the last fragment leftOf our unfallen nature, waking oftWithin our thought, to beckon us beyondThe narrow circle of the seen and known,And always tending to a noble end,As all things must that overrule the soul,And for a space unseat the helmsman, Will.The fate of England and of freedom onceSeemed wavering in the heart of one plain man,One step of his and the great dial-hand,That marks the destined progress of the worldIn the eternal round from wisdom onTo higher wisdom, had been made to pauseA hundred years. That step he did not take,—He knew not why, nor we, but only God,—And lived to make his simple oaken chairMore terrible and grandly beautiful,More full of majesty than any throneBefore or after, of a British king.Upon the pier stood two stern-visaged men,Looking to where a little craft lay moored,Swayed by the lazy current of the Thames,Which weltered by in muddy listlessness.Grave men they were, and battlings of fierce thoughtHad trampled out all softness from their brows,And ploughed rough furrows there before their time,For another crop than such as homebred PeaceSows broadcast in the willing soil of Youth.Care, not of self, but of the commonweal,Had robbed their eyes of youth, and left insteadA look of patient power and iron will,And something fiercer, too, that gave broad hintOf the plain weapons girded at their sides.The younger had an aspect of command,—Not such as trickles down, a slender stream,In the shrunk channel of a great descent,—But such as lies entowered in heart and head,And an arm prompt to do the 'hests of both.His was a brow where gold were out of place,And yet it seemed right worthy of a crown,(Though he despised such,) were it only madeOf iron, or some serviceable stuffThat would have matched his sinewy, brown face.The elder, although he hardly seemed,(Care makes so little of some five short years,)Had a clear, honest face, whose rough-hewn strengthWas mildened by the scholar's wiser heartTo sober courage, such as best befitsThe unsullied temper of a well-taught mind,Yet so remained that one could plainly guessThe hushed volcano smouldering underneath.He spoke: the other, hearing, kept his gazeStill fixed, as on some problem in the sky."O, Cromwell, we are fallen on evil times!There was a day when England had wide roomFor honest men as well as foolish kings;But now the uneasy stomach of the timeTurns squeamish at them both. Therefore let usSeek out that savage clime, where men as yetAre free: there sleeps the vessel on the tide,Her languid canvas drooping for the wind;Give us but that, and what need we to fearThis Order of the Council? The free wavesWill not say, No, to please a wayward king,Nor will the winds turn traitors at his beck:All things are fitly cared for, and the LordWill watch as kindly o'er the exodusOf us his servants now, as in old time.We have no cloud or fire, and haply weMay not pass dry-shod through the ocean-stream;But, saved or lost, all things are in His hand."So spake he, and meantime the other stoodWith wide gray eyes still reading the blank air,As if upon the sky's blue wall he sawSome mystic sentence, written by a handSuch as of old made pale the Assyrian king,Girt with his satraps in the blazing feast."Hampden! a moment since, my purpose wasTo fly with thee,—for I will call it flight,Nor flatter it with any smoother name,—But something in me bids me not to go;And I am one, thou knowest, who, unmovedBy what the weak deem omens, yet give heedAnd reverence due to whatsoe'er my soulWhispers of warning to the inner ear.Moreover, as I know that God brings roundHis purposes in ways undreamed by us,And makes the wicked but his instrumentsTo hasten on their swift and sudden fall,I see the beauty of his providenceIn the King's order: blind, he will not letHis doom part from him, but must bid it stayAs 't were a cricket, whose enlivening chirpHe loved to hear beneath his very hearth.Why should we fly? Nay, why not rather stayAnd rear again our Zion's crumbled walls,Not, as of old the walls of Thebes were built,By minstrel twanging, but, if need should be,With the more potent music of our swords?Think'st thou that score of men beyond the seaClaim more God's care than all of England here?No: when he moves His arm, it is to aidWhole peoples, heedless if a few be crushed,As some are ever, when the destinyOf man takes one stride onward nearer home.Believe it, 'tis the mass of men He loves;And, where there is most sorrow and most want,Where the high heart of man is trodden downThe most, 'tis not because He hides his faceFrom them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate.Not so: there most is He, for there is HeMost needed. Men who seek for Fate abroadAre not so near his heart as they who dareFrankly to face her where she faces them,On their own threshold, where their souls are strongTo grapple with and throw her; as I once,Being yet a boy, did cast this puny king,Who now has grown so dotard as to deemThat he can wrestle with an angry realm,And throw the brawned Antæus of men's rights.No, Hampden! they have half-way conquered FateWho go half-way to meet her,—as will I.Freedom hath yet a work for me to do;So speaks that inward voice which never yetSpake falsely, when it urged the spirit onTo noble deeds for country and mankind.And, for success, I ask no more than this,—To bear unflinching witness to the truth.All true, whole men succeed: for what is worthSuccess's name, unless it be the thought,The inward surety, to have carried outA noble purpose to a noble end,Although it be the gallows or the block?'Tis only Falsehood that doth ever needThese outward shows of gain to bolster her.Be it we prove the weaker with our swords;Truth only needs to be for once spoke out,And there's such music in her, such strange rhythm,As makes men's memories her joyous slaves,And clings around the soul, as the sky clingsRound the mute earth, forever beautiful,And, if o'erclouded, only to burst forthMore all-embracingly divine and clear:Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis likeA star new-born, that drops into its place,And which, once circling in its placid round,Not all the tumult of the earth can shake."What should we do in that small colonyOf pinched fanatics, who would rather chooseFreedom to clip an inch more from their hair,Than the great chance of setting England free?Not there, amid the stormy wilderness,Should we learn wisdom; or if learned, what roomTo put it into act,—else worse than naught?We learn our souls more, tossing for an hourUpon this huge and ever-vexèd seaOf human thought, where kingdoms go to wreckLike fragile bubbles yonder in the stream,Than in a cycle of New England sloth,Broke only by some petty Indian war,Or quarrel for a letter more or less,In some hard word, which, spelt in either wayNot their most learned clerks can understand.New times demand new measures and new men;The world advances, and in time outgrowsThe laws that in our fathers' day were best;And, doubtless, after us, some purer schemeWill be shaped out by wiser men than we,Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.We cannot bring Utopia by force;But better, almost, be at work in sin;Than in a brute inaction browse and sleep.No man is born into the world, whose workIs not born with him; there is always work,And tools to work withal, for those who will;And blessèd are the horny hands of toil!The busy world shoves angrily asideThe man who stands with arms akimbo set,Until occasion tells him what to do;And he who waits to have his task marked outShall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds:Reason and Government, like two broad seas,Yearn for each other with outstretched armsAcross this narrow isthmus of the throne,And roll their white surf higher every day.One age moves onward, and the next builds upCities and gorgeous palaces, where stoodThe rude log huts of those who tamed the wild,Rearing from out the forests they had felledThe goodly framework of a fairer state;The builder's trowel and the settler's axeAre seldom wielded by the selfsame hand;Ours is the harder task, yet not the lessShall we receive the blessing for our toilFrom the choice spirits of the aftertime.My soul is not a palace of the past,Where outworn creeds, like Rome's gray senate quake,Hearing afar the Vandal's trumpet hoarse,That shakes old systems with a thunder-fit.The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change;Then let it come: I have no dread of whatIs called for by the instinct of mankind;Nor think I that God's world will fall apart,Because we tear a parchment more or less.Truth is eternal, but her effluence,With endless change is fitted to the hour;Her mirror is turned forward to reflectThe promise of the future, not the past.He who would win the name of truly greatMust understand his own age and the next,And make the present ready to fulfilIts prophecy, and with the future mergeGently and peacefully, as wave with wave.The future works out great men's destinies;The present is enough for common souls,Who, never looking forward, are indeedMere clay, wherein the footprints of their ageAre petrified forever: better thoseWho lead the blind old giant by the handFrom out the pathless desert where he gropes,And set him onward in his darksome way.I do not fear to follow out the truth,Albeit along the precipice's edge.Let us speak plain: there is more force in namesThan most men dream of; and a lie may keepIts throne a whole age longer, if it skulkBehind the shield of some fair-seeming name,Let us call tyrants,tyrants, and maintain,That only freedom comes by grace of God,And all that comes not by his grace must fallFor men in earnest have no time to wasteIn patching fig-leaves for the naked truth."I will have one more grapple with the manCharles Stuart: whom the boy o'ercame,The man stands not in awe of. I, perchance,Am one raised up by the Almighty armTo witness some great truth to all the world.Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot,And mould the world unto the scheme of God,Have a fore-consciousness of their high doom,As men are known to shiver at the heart,When the cold shadow of some coming illCreeps slowly o'er their spirits unawares.Hath Good less power of prophecy than Ill?How else could men whom God hath called to swayEarth's rudder, and to steer the bark of Truth,Beating against the tempest tow'rd her port,Bear all the mean and buzzing grievances,The petty martyrdoms, wherewith Sin strivesTo weary out the tethered hope of Faith,The sneers, the unrecognizing look of friends,Who worship the dead corpse of old king Custom,Where it doth lie in state within the Church,Striving to cover up the mighty oceanWith a man's palm, and making even the truthLie for them, holding up the glass reversed,To make the hope of man seem farther off?My God! when I read o'er the bitter livesOf men whose eager hearts were quite too greatTo beat beneath the cramped mode of the day,And see them mocked at by the world they love,Haggling with prejudice for pennyworthsOf that reform which their hard toil will makeThe common birthright of the age to come,—When I see this, spite of my faith in God,I marvel how their hearts bear up so long;Nor could they, but for this same prophecy,This inward feeling of the glorious end."Deem me not fond; but in my warmer youth,Ere my heart's bloom was soiled and brushed away,I had great dreams of mighty things to come;Of conquest, whether by the sword or penI knew not; but some conquest I would have,Or else swift death: now wiser grown in years,I find youth's dreams are but the flutteringsOf those strong wings whereon the soul shall soarIn aftertime to win a starry throne;And so I cherish them, for they were lots,Which I, a boy, cast in the helm of Fate.Now will I draw them, since a man's right hand,A right hand guided by an earnest soul,With a true instinct, takes the golden prizeFrom out a thousand blanks. What men call luckIs the prerogative of valiant souls,The fealty life pays its rightful kings.The helm is shaking now, and I will stayTo pluck my lot forth; it were sin to flee!"So they two turned together; one to die,Fighting for freedom on the bloody field;The other, far more happy, to becomeA name earth wears forever next her heart;One of the few that have a right to rankWith the true Makers: for his spirit wroughtOrder from Chaos; proved that right divineDwelt only in the excellence of truth;And far within old Darkness' hostile linesAdvanced and pitched the shining tents of Light.Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell,That—not the least among his many claimsTo deathless honor—he was Milton's friend,A man not second among those who livedTo show us that the poet's lyre demandsAn arm of tougher sinew than the sword.1843.
SONG.O, moonlight deep and tender,A year and more agone,Your mist of golden splendorRound my betrothal shone!O, elm-leaves dark and dewy,The very same ye seem,The low wind trembles through ye,Ye murmur in my dream!O, river, dim with distance,Flow thus forever by:A part of my existenceWithin your heart doth lie!O, stars, ye saw our meeting,Two beings and one soul,Two hearts so madly beatingTo mingle and be whole!O, happy night, deliverHer kisses back to me,Or keep them all, and give herA blissful dream of me!1842.
A CHIPPEWA LEGEND.[A]ἀλγεινὰ μέν μοι καὶ λέγειν ἐστὶν τάδεἄλγος δὲ σιγᾷν.Æschylus, Prom. Vinct. 197.The old Chief, feeling now well-nigh his end,Called his two eldest children to his side,And gave them, in few words, his parting charge:—"My son and daughter, me ye see no more;The happy hunting-grounds await me, greenWith change of spring and summer through the year:But, for remembrance, after I am gone,Be kind to little Sheemah for my sake:Weakling he is and young, and knows not yetTo set the trap, or draw the seasoned bow;Therefore of both your loves he hath more need,And he, who needeth love, to love hath right;It is not like our furs and stores of corn,Whereto we claim sole title by our toil,But the Great Spirit plants it in our hearts,And waters it, and gives it sun, to beThe common stock and heritage of all:Therefore be kind to Sheemah, that yourselvesMay not be left deserted in your need."Alone, beside a lake, their wigwam stood,Far from the other dwellings of their tribe;And, after many moons, the lonelinessWearied the elder brother, and he said,"Why should I dwell here all alone, shut outFrom the free, natural joys that fit my age?Lo, I am tall and strong, well skilled to hunt,Patient of toil and hunger, and not yetHave seen the danger which I dared not lookFull in the face; what hinders me to beA mighty Brave and Chief among my kin?"So, taking up his arrows and his bow,As if to hunt, he journeyed swiftly on,Until he gained the wigwams of his tribe,Where, choosing out a bride, he soon forgot,In all the fret and bustle of new life,The little Sheemah and his father's charge.Now when the sister found her brother gone,And that, for many days, he came not back,She wept for Sheemah more than for herself;For Love bides longest in a woman's heart,And flutters many times before he flies,And then doth perch so nearly, that a wordMay lure him back, as swift and glad as light;And Duty lingers even when Love is goneOft looking out in hope of his return;And, after Duty hath been driven forth,Then Selfishness creeps in the last of all,Warming her lean hands at the lonely hearth,And crouching o'er the embers, to shut outWhatever paltry warmth and light are left,With avaricious greed, from all beside.So, for long months, the sister hunted wide,And cared for little Sheemah tenderly;But, daily more and more, the lonelinessGrew wearisome, and to herself she sighed,"Am I not fair? at least the glassy pool,That hath no cause to flatter, tells me so;But, O, how flat and meaningless the tale,Unless it tremble on a lover's tongue!Beauty hath no true glass, except it beIn the sweet privacy of loving eyes."Thus deemed she idly, and forgot the loreWhich she had learned of nature and the woods,That beauty's chief reward is to itself,And that the eyes of Love reflect aloneThe inward fairness, which is blurred and lostUnless kept clear and white by Duty's careSo she went forth and sought the haunts of men,And, being wedded, in her household cares,Soon, like the elder brother, quite forgotThe little Sheemah and her father's charge.But Sheemah, left alone within the lodge,Waited and waited, with a shrinking heart,Thinking each rustle was his sister's step,Till hope grew less and less, and then went out,And every sound was changed from hope to fear.Few sounds there were:—the dropping of a nut,The squirrel's chirrup, and the jay's harsh scream,Autumn's sad remnants of blithe Summer's cheer,Heard at long intervals, seemed but to makeThe dreadful void of silence silenter.Soon what small store his sister left was gone,And, through the Autumn, he made shift to liveOn roots and berries, gathered in much fearOf wolves, whose ghastly howl he heard ofttimes,Hollow and hungry, at the dead of night.But Winter came at last, and, when the snow,Thick-heaped for gleaming leagues o'er hill and plain,Spread its unbroken silence over all,Made bold by hunger, he was fain to glean,(More sick at heart than Ruth, and all alone,)After the harvest of the merciless wolf,Grim Boaz, who, sharp-ribbed and gaunt, yet fearedA thing more wild and starving than himself;Till, by degrees, the wolf and he grew friends,And shared, together all the winter through.Late in the Spring, when all the ice was gone,The elder brother, fishing in the lake,Upon whose edge his father's wigwam stood,Heard a low moaning noise upon the shore:Half like a child it seemed, half like a wolf,And straightway there was something in his heartThat said, "It is thy brother Sheemah's voice."So, paddling swiftly to the bank, he saw,Within a little thicket close at hand,A child that seemed fast changing to a wolf,From the neck downward, gray with shaggy hairThat still crept on and upward as he looked.The face was turned away, but well he knewThat it was Sheemah's, even his brother's face.Then with his trembling hands he hid his eyes,And bowed his head, so that he might not seeThe first look of his brother's eyes, and cried,"O, Sheemah! O, my brother, speak to me!Dost thou not know me, that I am thy brother?Come to me, little Sheemah, thou shalt dwellWith me henceforth, and know no care or want!"Sheemah was silent for a space, as if'T were hard to summon up a human voice,And, when he spake, the sound was of a wolf's:"I know thee not, nor art thou what thou say'st;I have none other brethren than the wolves,And, till thy heart be changed from what it is,Thou art not worthy to be called their kin."Then groaned the other, with a choking tongue,"Alas! my heart is changed right bitterly;'Tis shrunk and parched within me even now!"And, looking upward fearfully, he sawOnly a wolf that shrank away and ran,Ugly and fierce, to hide among the woods.
[A]For the leading incidents in this tale, I am indebted to the very valuable "Algic Researches" of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq.
STANZAS ON FREEDOMMen! whose boast it is that yeCome of fathers brave and free,If there breathe on earth a slave,Are ye truly free and brave?If ye do not feel the chain,When it works a brother's pain,Are ye not base slaves indeed,Slaves unworthy to be freed?Women! who shall one day bearSons to breathe New England air,If ye hear, without a blush,Deeds to make the roused blood rushLike red lava through your veins,For your sisters now in chains,—Answer! are ye fit to beMothers of the brave and free?Is true Freedom but to breakFetters for our own dear sake,And, with leathern hearts, forgetThat we owe mankind a debt?No! true freedom is to shareAll the chains our brothers wear,And, with heart and hand, to beEarnest to make others free!They are slaves who fear to speakFor the fallen and the weak,They are slaves who will not chooseHatred, scoffing, and abuse,Rather than in silence shrinkFrom the truth they needs must think;They are slaves who dare not beIn the right with two or three.
COLUMBUS.The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind,With freaks of sudden hush; the reeling seaNow thumps like solid rock beneath the stern,Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes short, and, fallingCrumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling downThe broad backs of the waves, which jostle and crowdTo fling themselves upon that unknown shore,Their used familiar since the dawn of time,Whither this foredoomed life is guided onTo sway on triumph's hushed, aspiring poiseOne glittering moment, then to break fulfilled.How lonely is the sea's perpetual swing,The melancholy wash of endless waves,The sigh of some grim monster undescried,Fear-painted on the canvas of the dark,Shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine!Yet night brings more companions than the dayTo this drear waste; new constellations burn,And fairer stars, with whose calm height my soulFinds nearer sympathy than with my herdOf earthen souls, whose vision's scanty ringMakes me its prisoner to beat my wingsAgainst the cold bars of their unbelief,Knowing in vain my own free heaven beyond.O God! this world, so crammed with eager life,That comes and goes and wanders back to silenceLike the idle wind, which yet man's shaping mindCan make his drudge to swell the longing sailsOf highest endeavor,—this mad, unthrift world,Which, every hour, throws life enough awayTo make her deserts kind and hospitable,Lets her great destinies be waved asideBy smooth, lip-reverent, formal infidels,Who weigh the God they not believe with gold,And find no spot in Judas, save that he,Driving a duller bargain than he ought,Saddled his guild with too cheap precedent.O Faith! if thou art strong, thine oppositeIs mighty also, and the dull fool's sneerHath ofttimes shot chill palsy through the arm,Just lifted to achieve its crowning deed,And made the firm-based heart, that would have quailedThe rack or fagot, shudder like a leafWrinkled with frost, and loose upon its stem.The wicked and the weak, by some dark law,Have a strange power to shut and rivet downTheir own horizon round us, to unwingOur heaven-aspiring visions, and to blurWith surly clouds the Future's gleaming peaks,Far seen across the brine of thankless years.If the chosen soul could never be aloneIn deep mid-silence, open-doored to God,No greatness ever had been dreamed or done;Among dull hearts a prophet never grew;The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.The old world is effete; there man with manJostles, and, in the brawl for means to live,Life is trod under-foot,—Life, the one blockOf marble that's vouchsafed wherefrom to carveOur great thoughts, white and god-like, to shine downThe future, Life, the irredeemable block,Which one o'er-hasty chisel-dint oft mars,Scanting our room to cut the features outOf our full hope, so forcing us to crownWith a mean head the perfect limbs, or leaveThe god's face glowing o'er a satyr's trunk,Failure's brief epitaph.Yes, Europe's worldReels on to judgment; there the common need,Losing God's sacred use, to be a bond'Twixt Me and Thee, sets each one scowlinglyO'er his own selfish hoard at bay; no state,Knit strongly with eternal fibres upOf all men's separate and united weals,Self-poised and sole as stars, yet one as light.Holds up a shape of large HumanityTo which by natural instinct every manPays loyalty exulting, by which allMould their own lives, and feel their pulses filledWith the red fiery blood of the general life,Making them mighty in peace, as now in warThey are, even in the flush of victory, weak,Conquering that manhood which should them subdue.And what gift bring I to this untried world?Shall the same tragedy be played anew,And the same lurid curtain drop at lastOn one dread desolation, one fierce crashOf that recoil which on its makers GodLets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make,Early or late? Or shall that commonwealthWhose potent unity and concentric forceCan draw these scattered joints and parts of menInto a whole ideal man once more,Which sucks not from its limbs the life away,But sends it flood-tide and creates itselfOver again in every citizen,Be there built up? For me, I have no choice;I might turn back to other destinies,For one sincere key opes all Fortune's doors;But whoso answers not God's earliest call,Forfeits or dulls that faculty supremeOf lying open to his geniusWhich makes the wise heart certain of its ends.Here am I; for what end God knows, not I;Westward still points the inexorable soul:Here am I, with no friend but the sad sea,The beating heart of this great enterprise,Which, without me, would stiffen in swift death;This have I mused on, since mine eye could firstAmong the stars distinguish and with joyRest on that God-fed Pharos of the north,On some blue promontory of heaven lightedThat juts far out into the upper sea;To this one hope my heart hath clung for years,As would a foundling to the talismanHung round his neck by hands he knew not whose.A poor, vile thing and dross to all beside,Yet he therein can feel a virtue leftBy the sad pressure of a mother's hand,And unto him it still is tremulousWith palpitating haste and wet with tears,The key to him of hope and humanness,The coarse shell of life's pearl, Expectancy.This hope hath been to me for love and fame,Hath made me wholly lonely on the earth,Building me up as in a thick-ribbed tower,Wherewith enwalled my watching spirit burned,Conquering its little island from the Dark,Sole as a scholar's lamp, and heard men's steps,In the far hurry of the outward world,Pass dimly forth and back, sounds heard in dreamAs Ganymede by the eagle was snatched upFrom the gross sod to be Jove's cupbearer,So was I lifted by my great design:And who hath trod Olympus, from his eyeFades not that broader outlook of the gods;His life's low valleys overbrow earth's clouds,And that Olympian spectre of the pastLooms towering up in sovereign memory,Beckoning his soul from meaner heights of doom.Had but the shadow of the Thunderer's bird,Flashing athwart my spirit, made of meA swift-betraying vision's Ganymede,Yet to have greatly dreamed precludes low endsGreat days have ever such a morning-red,On such a base great futures are built up,And aspiration, though not put in act,Comes back to ask its plighted troth again,Still watches round its grave the unlaid ghostOf a dead virtue, and makes other hopes,Save that implacable one, seem thin and bleakAs shadows of bare trees upon the snow,Bound freezing there by the unpitying moon.While other youths perplexed their mandolins,Praying that Thetis would her fingers twineIn the loose glories of her lover's hair,And wile another kiss to keep back day,I, stretched beneath the many-centuried shadeOf some writhed oak, the wood's Laocoön,Did of my hope a dryad mistress make,Whom I would woo to meet me privily,Or underneath the stars, or when the moonFlecked all the forest floor with scattered pearls.O days whose memory tames to fawning downThe surly fell of Ocean's bristled neck!I know not when this hope enthralled me first,But from my boyhood up I loved to hearThe tall-pine-forests of the ApennineMurmur their hoary legends of the sea,Which hearing, I in vision clear beheld;The sudden dark of tropic night shut downO'er the huge whisper of great watery wastes,The while a pair of herons trailinglyFlapped inland, where some league-wide river hurledThe yellow spoil of unconjectured realmsFar through a gulf's green silence, never scarredBy any but the Northwind's hurrying keels.And not the pines alone; all sights and soundsTo my world-seeking heart paid fealty,And catered for it as the Cretan beesBrought honey to the baby Jupiter,Who in his soft hand crushed a violet,God-like foremusing the rough thunder's gripe;Then did I entertain the poet's song,My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'erThat iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell,I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chainsWhose adamantine links, his manacles,The western main shook growling, and still gnawed.I brooded on the wise Athenian's taleOf happy Atlantis, and heard Björne's keelCrunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore:For I believed the poets; it is theyWho utter wisdom from the central deep,And, listening to the inner flow of things,Speak to the age out of eternity.Ah me! old hermits sought for solitudeIn caves and desert places of the earth,Where their own heart-beat was the only stirOf living thing that comforted the year;But the bald pillar-top of Simeon,In midnight's blankest waste, were populous,Matched with the isolation drear and deepOf him who pines among the swarm of men,At once a new thought's king and prisoner,Feeling the truer life within his life,The fountain of his spirit's prophecy,Sinking away and wasting, drop by drop,In the ungrateful sands of sceptic ears.He in the palace-aisles of untrod woodsDoth walk a king; for him the pent-up cellWidens beyond the circles of the stars,And all the sceptred spirits of the pastCome thronging in to greet him as their peer;But in the market-place's glare and throngHe sits apart, an exile, and his browAches with the mocking memory of its crown.But to the spirit select there is no choice;He cannot say, This will I do, or that,For the cheap means putting Heaven's ends in pawn,And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold sternOf destiny's first-born, for smoother fieldsThat yield no crop of self-denying will;A hand is stretched to him from out the dark,Which grasping without question, he is ledWhere there is work that he must do for God.The trial still is the strength's complement,And the uncertain, dizzy path that scalesThe sheer heights of supremest purposesIs steeper to the angel than the child.Chances have laws as fixed as planets have,And disappointment's dry and bitter root,Envy's harsh berries, and the choking poolOf the world's scorn, are the right mother-milkTo the tough hearts that pioneer their kind,And break a pathway to those unknown realmsThat in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled;Endurance is the crowning quality,And patience all the passion of great hearts;These are their stay, and when the leaden worldSets its hard face against their fateful thought,And brute strength, like a scornful conqueror,Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale,The inspired soul but flings his patience in,And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe,—One faith against a whole earth's unbelief,One soul against the flesh of all mankind.Thus ever seems it when my soul can hearThe voice that errs not; then my triumph gleams,O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all nightMy heart flies on before me as I sail;Far on I see my lifelong enterprise,Which rose like Ganges mid the freezing snowsOf a world's sordidness, sweep broadening down,And, gathering to itself a thousand streams,Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea;I see the ungated wall of chaos old,With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night,Fade like a wreath of unreturning mistBefore the irreversible feet of light;—And lo, with what clear omen in the eastOn day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn,Like young Leander rosy from the seaGlowing at Hero's lattice!One day moreThese muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me.God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded;Let not this one frail bark, to hollow whichI have dug out the pith and sinewy heartOf my aspiring life's fair trunk, be soCast up to warp and blacken in the sun,Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle offHis cheek-swollen mates, and from the leaning mastFortune's full sail strains forward!One poor day!—Remember whose and not how short it is!It is God's day, it is Columbus's.A lavish day! One day, with life and heart,Is more than time enough to find a world.1844.